Cheek's Changes

Liveliest art museum in the South is the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts at Richmond, and liveliest museum director is the man who runs it, Leslie Cheek Jr., 51. Since taking over eleven years ago, Yale-trained Director Cheek has doubled his museum space, added a theater for nightly concerts, lectures, classic old movies, and local repertory-company performances. He organized an art loan program to Virginia's main towns, built the world's first "artmobile" (an air-conditioned trailer truck that houses a miniature exhibition on wheels) to bring art to the hinterlands.

On the theory that a museum should be a popular showroom of art rather than a quiet haven. Cheek even goes so far as to pipe soft music through the museum galleries (different music subtly matched to the mood of different galleries), provides visitors with canned gallery talks (on transistor radio sets) as well.

Last week Cheek announced yet another innovation. Starting in January, his museum will be open from 8 to 10 five evenings a week, as well as in the daytime. "Now, amazingly enough," Cheek beamed, "for the first time in the world, a museum will suit its visiting hours to the convenience of the citizens it serves."

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